Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 113

A new study published in the journal PLoS Genetics describes the worrying finding.

Researchers have analyzed the genomes of a thousand Han Chinese people, determining the link between their genetic variations and their perception of ten different scents. They compared the results with the same experiment repeated with six scents with a more ethnically diverse group of 364 people.

Two new receptors for smell were identified, one for detecting the synthetic musk used in fragrances and another for a compound in the odor from the human armpit. They found that people with the ancestral versions of the genes, the same as those found in non-human primates, for their scent receptors, rated the corresponding scents as more intense compared to participants with the more recently emerging variants of the genes.

A new preprint paper has been published detailing the finding.

Astronomers witnessed a potential microlensing event in 2011 that has now been confirmed to be due to the presence of a free-floating black hole. Such black holes have been theorized to exist but hadn't been found, as they are much harder to observe amongst the black nothingness of space.

Researchers looked for lensing effects, the bending of light from stars close to a black hole, to find the black hole. When a black hole is further away from neighboring stars, its gravitational pull is weaker, and the lensing effect is lessened, making them significantly more difficult to find.

The discovery has caused some controversy on whether it truly is the Endeavour.

Researchers found the shipwreck off the coast of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Researchers from the Australian National Maritime Museum have claimed it is the remains of Captain James Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavour, which sunk in August 1778. However, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project has claimed it is too early to say definitively.

A new study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science highlights the accelerating ice loss Mount Everest is experiencing.

Researchers from the University of Maine have concluded that several decades worth of accumulation in Mount Everest's glaciers are melting and sublimating away annually due to human-induced climate change. The decaying glaciers will likely increase avalanches' occurrence and decrease the glacier's capacity to store water, which communities depend on for drinking water and irrigation.

It is also expected that expeditions to climb the mountain could become more challenging, as bedrock becomes exposed with snow and ice cover wearing thin. The research, resulting from the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, show that impacts of human-induced climate change are reaching the highest glaciers around the world, significantly more so since the later 1990s. An ice-core taken from the South Col Glacier shows that ice is thinning 80 times faster than the time taken to accumulate.

A study describing the new material has been published in the journal Nature.

MIT chemical engineers have created a new material dubbed 2DPA-1, which is stronger than steel, as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. The study's authors suggest it could be used in several applications, such as a lightweight, durable coating for automotive parts or cell phones or as a building material in bridges or other structures.

SpaceX is helping to carry out the NROL-87 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The Falcon 9 carrying the classified payload was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on February 2nd at 12:27:26 p.m. PST (3:27:26 p.m. EST; 2027:26 UTC). The NRO owns the U.S. government's fleet of spy satellites, which map the Earth while monitoring communications between foreign entities and tracking global naval movements.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 returned safely to Earth just over eight minutes following launch, landing at Vandenberg's Landing Zone 4. Per the NRO's request, SpaceX's livestream coverage of the event ended shortly after the first stage touched down.

A study on the new material has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst engineered a new metamaterial, a material that has a property not found in naturally occurring materials. The "elasto-magnetic" metamaterial comprises an elastic, rubber-like substance with tiny magnets embedded throughout it.

The International Space Station (ISS) will likely be decommissioned in late 2030.

NASA has provided a updated timeline for the ISS, entitled the "International Space Station Transition Report," which highlights what the station plans to achieve before the end of its operational life. The ISS National Laboratory is currently responsible for utilizing half of NASA's resources aboard the space station, facilitating experiments and research for government agencies, academic institutions, and commercial users.

The Artemis I mission will now launch no sooner than April 2022.

NASA had originally scheduled the launch for late 2021, but it has since suffered multiple delays. A pre-flight "wet dress rehearsal" was scheduled for late February, but this has been delayed until at least mid-March, thanks to a long list of tasks NASA still needs to attend to for the mission.

Astronomers observing near-Earth objects have found that a spent SpaceX rocket stage from a mission years ago is on track to collide with the Moon.

The astronomer is Bill Gray, known for the Project Pluto software that is used to track many near-Earth objects such as asteroids, comets, etc. Gray called upon fellow astronomers, both amateur and professionals, to track SpaceX's object and make additional observations. With the acquired data, Gray believes that SpaceX's spent upper rocket stage will likely impact the far side of the Moon close to the equator on March 4.

Now, if the observations prove to be accurate and SpaceX's spent rocket debris crashes into the Moon, does Elon Musk's company get sued? Firstly, no one actually owns the Moon, so no country could sue the company for debris crashing into its surface. However, if the debris were to crash into a rover, then there could be a precedence for legal action as the Outer Space Treaty of 1966, and the Convention on International Liability for Damage Causes by Space Objects of 1972 states countries can make legal claims against other countries if their spacecrafts are damaged by other spacecrafts.

A team of astronomers captured an incredible image of the core of our Milky Way galaxy, showing "the best insight yet into the population of mysterious 'radio filaments' found nowhere else."

The image was published by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory and is comprised of 20 separate observations that took more than 200 hours of time to obtain. The radio telescope used to make the observations is a 64-antenna radio telescope called the MeerKAT array, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The array of extremely sensitive antennas was focussed at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, approximately 25,000 light-years away from Earth.

The below image showcases parallel radio-emitting magnetized threads astronomers describe as "filaments". These filaments consist of emissions from the galactic center where the 4 million solar mass supermassive black hole Sagittarius A resides at the brightest point. Researchers behind the report say that the detail of this image may be a goldmine for scientific research.

It seems that many people within the US public don't seem to believe that the Space Force is an authentic branch of the US military.

Back in October of last year, a Space Force captain was traveling with their partner and arrived at the Spirit Airlines ticket counter to receive their ticket. The Space Force captain asked the ticketer to apply the waived baggage fee for active-duty military personnel after explaining they were an officer with Space Force. The Spirit employee didn't believe the officer was on active duty or that the branch of the military existed, even after the officer showed the employee a military-issued ID card.

The officer spoke to Military.com, saying, "In the moment, I was flabbergasted. We tried to take it on methodically and convince him that the Space Force was real." Former President Donald Trump signed in the Space Force under the Department of the Air Force two years ago, and it seems that despite the time, many individuals don't seem to believe in its existence.

NASA has taken to its blog to explain that the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to observe a region of space called the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex.

The Chamaeleon Cloud Complex is a star-forming region that stretches 65-light years wide. The above photograph is a composite image called Chamaeleon Cloud I (Cha I), and it showcases the reflection nebulae glowing with the light of the young blue stars. Additionally, the dusty dark clouds seen throughout the image are regions of space where stars are forming. Radiant knots are also seen throughout the image. These are called Herbig-Haro objects.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications describes the discovery.

The researchers were able to change the magnetic properties of nickel phosphorus trisulfide (NiPS3), by way of a quasiparticle known as "excitons." An exciton refers to an electron and a "hole" left behind where the electron was when it moves after absorbing energy from an incoming photon of light. Quantum mechanics mean the electron and the hole remain connected.

A new study published in the journal Cell Reports describes the process.

Most living cells require vitamin B12 to function, including the bacterial cells found in your gut microbiome. Researchers from the University of California Riverside (UCR) have found that beneficial gut microbes can share the ability to acquire vitamin B12 with one another through bacterial sex, or bacterial conjugation.

The megaflash occurred in the United States on April 29th, 2020.

The lightning flash spanned 768 kilometers (447.2 miles) across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that this distance is equivalent to that between New York City and Columbus, Ohio, or between London, England and Hamburg, Germany.

This flash breaks the previous world record set in southern Brazil on October 31st, 2018, by approximately 60 kilometers. Another world-record was also certified in the latest WMO statement for the longest duration flash. The flash that broke the previous record occurred over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18th, 2020, and lasted for 17.1 seconds, breaking the previous record by 0.37, which was also set in northern Argentina, on March 4th, 2019.

A study confirming the asteroid's existence has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The asteroid is dubbed 2020 XL5 and is the second confirmed transient Earth Trojan asteroid. These asteroids are found orbiting the L4 or L5 Lagrangian points, highly gravitationally stable points in space. Newton's laws of gravity result in five of these points in the Earth-Sun system, where the gravitational forces acting on an object cancel out.

The asteroid is expected to stay at the L4 Lagrangian point for four thousand years. 2020 XL5 is estimated to be approximately 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) in diameter, compared to the first-identified Earth Trojan 2010 TK7, which has a diameter of ~380 meters. The shared orbit between the L4 point and Earth could allow spacecraft to visit the asteroid with a low energy budget.

NASA's Curiosity rover has been scouring the Martian surface since 2012.

The rover has detected a rich carbon signature associated with biological processes on Earth amongst samples collected from the Gale Crater. The samples were analyzed using the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments, but the detection doesn't directly point to any ancient life on Mars.

NASA has taken to its Perseverance Twitter account to post an image of a rock that was recently sampled by the Mars rover.

At the end of last month, NASA explained that its Mars rover named Perseverance was "constipated" with nasty martian pebbles causing numerous problems for collecting new samples. After some time, the Perseverance team decided it would perform rotational tests of the carousel to dislodge the rocks, and those rotational tests were a success. Additionally, the space agency also emptied the contents of Sample Tube 261.

Now that those hurdles have been overcome, Perseverance is back at the same location where the hurdles arose. As NASA writes in the above Twitter post, "this rock almost looked surprised that I was coming back!", referring to discarded contents of Sample Tube 261. Perseverance has successfully collected a sample from what could be one of the oldest rocks that the rover samples. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

NASA has taken to its blog to provide an update for the world's most powerful space telescope - the James Webb Space Telescope.

In a recent statement from the space agency, now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has arrived at its destination of Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a specific point in space that keeps the Earth in between the Sun and the telescope at all times, the months-long process of getting all of JWST's instruments up and running can begin.

NASA writes that the JWST team is currently preparing to turn off its heaters that have been keeping its extremely sensitive instruments nice and warm throughout its journey. JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument has an operating temperature of -449 Fahrenheit, as its designed to observe the middle of the infrared spectrum. If an object is warm on JWST, it may interfere with the observations made by the telescope, hence the operating temperature being so low.